Zócalo Public Square

Chefs have always had a knack for fame — from Julia Child to Napoleon’s personal chef, who published lucrative cookbooks and invented the tall white chef’s hat. But today, thanks in part to the Food Network, several seasons of "Top Chef" and "Hell’s Kitchen," and a burgeoning foodie culture, chefs are full-fledged celebrities. Besides running top restaurants across the country, they publish enough books to overwhelm the shelves — and abilities — of most any home cook. They host TV shows that rely on outsized personality as much as inventive recipes. And they lend their names and talents to chain eateries and bottled grocery-store sauces. Are celebrity chefs over exposed and over extended, and how have they transformed food? Pulitzer Prize winning LA Weekly food critic Jonathan Gold visited Zócalo with a panel of star chefs — including Nancy Silverton of Mozza, "Top Chef" Season Two winner Ilan Hall, and "Top Chef Masters" stars Ludovic Lefebvre of LudoBites and Susan Feniger of Border Grill and Street — to fi

After a long and bruising legislative battle, President Barack Obama signed national healthcare reform into law. The plan promises coverage to the uninsured, lower healthcare costs for small businesses, and tighter regulation of insurance companies, preventing them from denying care to the sick. The reform comes at a crucial time for California. The economic crisis has left the state considering cuts to its healthcare programs, particularly for the elderly and the disabled. With nearly one in four of its residents lacking access to care, California has the highest number of uninsured people of any state. What does national healthcare reform mean for California? Zócalo invited the L.A. Times’ Duke Helfand, the California HealthCare Foundation's Marian Mulkey, Jan Spencley of San Diegans for Healthcare Coverage, Small Business Majority Founder and CEO John Arensmeyer, and Lucien Wulsin of the Insure the Uninsured Project to consider how reform will help Californians, how it will impact local businesses, insurer

Salomón Huerta is known for revealing identity by obscuring it. He has painted collections of finely detailed portraits of the backs of heads, florid but unemotional masked lucha libre wrestlers, and unassuming suburban homes stripped of individuality. Huerta, who was born in Tijuana and raised in Boyle Heights, has exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, the Gagosian Gallery, and LACMA, and is beginning to paint new works with no unifying theme. But Huerta remains committed to his unusual creative process — destroying each piece several times with a sander, and then repainting on the same canvas. In an event made possible by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts, Huerta visited Zócalo to discuss with art critic David Pagel his method and what it says about art, ego, and creativity.

From translucent slivers of sushi to simple weeknight salmon dinners, seafood is a staple of the American diet, considered both healthy and luxurious. But what if there really aren’t more fish in the sea? Our craving for high-on-the-food-chain tuna and salmon bred nearly as big and thick as torpedoes is destabilizing ocean life and polluting the sea. Even as some chefs and suppliers aim to serve environmentally safe fish, others plate shark and whale. How sustainable is seafood? Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold visited Zócalo along with Providence Executive Chef Michael Cimarusti, Santa Monica Seafood’s Logan Kock, and Heal the Bay President Mark Gold to discuss how our eating habits hurt the environment, and whether there’s a way to eat what we want without doing harm.

After launching his architecture career in Los Angeles over 20 years ago, Michael Maltzan quickly distinguished himself with socially conscious buildings that depart from the hulking luxury structures of celebrity architects. His housing projects for the homeless – including the Rainbow Apartments on San Pedro, the recently completed New Carver Apartments on 17th and Hope, and the forthcoming Star Apartments at Sixth and Maple – provide protection, beauty, and services for a community more accustomed to unadorned and blocky shelter. His Inner-City Arts campus, designed inventively and built cost-effectively, provides children a place to learn in the heart of Skid Row. And he transformed the Hammer Museum’s courtyard into a more inviting and open space with the Billy Wilder Theater and café. Maltzan visited Zócalo to talk with KCRW’s Frances Anderton about his work, whether good design can be affordable, and how architecture shapes our lives. This event is made possible by a generous grant from the National En

No matter how many Silicon Valley-bound software engineers, Texan-imitating call center operators, or Pepsi-endorsing movie stars it produces, India retains a promise of untrammeled, ancient spirituality. But how is modernity changing some of the country’s oldest traditions? Children of businessmen and engineers disobey their parents to join obscure, exacting religious orders; holy men hold work-a-day jobs; Sufi mystics struggle in Talibanizing provinces. Historian and travel writer William Dalrymple, author of Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, visited Zócalo to explore where modern meets ancient in a transforming country, and the constant human pursuit of the divine.

Iraq isn’t the first war that began with an overestimation of American power. Woodrow Wilson and the pro-war progressives believed World War I would transform the world. Lyndon Johnson and the Camelot intellectuals thought America could stop any communist movement from taking power anywhere on earth. George W. Bush and the neoconservatives imagined they could usher in their very own 1989 in the Middle East. Why does success produce hubris, and can tragedy produce wisdom? In an event sponsored by the UCLA Burkle Center, journalist Peter Beinart, author of The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, visited Zócalo to chat with The Atlantic's Ben Schwarz about why it’s so difficult — and so crucial — to acknowledge the limits of American power.

Barack Obama rose to the presidency at a critical time in American history. Propelled by a galvanized left, admired for his cool temperament and high intellect, challenged as inexperienced, and provoking fierce and often racially-tinged opposition, the young Senator from Illinois took the oath of the highest office amid celebration despite the challenges ahead. The country faced its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; troops fought seemingly unwinnable wars in two countries; tens of millions of Americans needed healthcare. How did the Obama administration survive its first year, and how did it fare? Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter, author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One, visited Zócalo to tell the inside story of the disciplined, self-aware president and the colorful team that aims to see the country and the world into a new era.

Wilbert Rideau spent 44 years in one of the country’s most infamous prisons, Louisiana’s Angola penitentiary. After killing a woman in a moment of panic following a botched bank robbery, Rideau was sentenced to death at 19, later amended to life imprisonment. From within Angola, long the sight of prison reform activism because of its brutal living and working conditions, Rideau worked to transform the criminal justice system. Though the brutality of earlier decades is largely gone, prisoners at Angola and around the country still suffer mistreatment and overcrowding due to harsh sentencing laws. Rideau, author of In the Place of Justice, visited Zócalo to reflect on his time, his work, and why lifting censorship rules is the key to prison reform.

The Hoover Dam was once thought to be a remote regional project, approved as an afterthought by a Republican president before the stock market crashed. But by the time it was completed, and in the 75 years since it was dedicated, the Dam has come to symbolize American resilience and ingenuity at one of the worst times in our history. Construction at the height of the Depression employed thousands and spurred development of urban centers in the West, transforming the political balance of the country and shifting its governing philosophy from rugged individualism toward collective enterprise and social support. What is the legacy of the Hoover Dam today, particularly as Americans face a deepening water crisis and the worst economic downturn since the Depression? Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik, author of Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century, visited Zócalo to explore the epic story of the Hoover Dam and how it transformed the country.

Zurich and Los Angeles share an intriguing political distinction: each is the largest city in the world’s two greatest centers of direct democracy. California and Switzerland use initiatives and referenda more often than any place in the world, and have for more than a century, when Los Angeles followed Zurich’s model and instituted the first municipal system of direct democracy in the U.S. But direct democracy has been challenged in both places, particularly when it seems that financing, populism, misinformation, or sheer complexity — rather than well-informed voters turning out in strong numbers — make or break initiatives. How democratic are Zurich and Los Angeles, what challenges does each city face, and how might they improve their political processes? Zócalo Public Square and the Swiss Confederation invited journalist Joe Mathews, Swiss National Parliament member Andreas Gross, Swiss journalist Bruno Kaufmann, attorney George Kieffer, who led the 1999 Los Angeles Charter revision, and California Common

With internationally acclaimed novels that sell millions of copies in 45 countries and 30 languages, Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a writer for a global age. Zafón, born in Barcelona and living in Los Angeles, where he first came to write screenplays, cites as his influences the 19th century British, Russian, and French giants — Dickens, Tolstoy, Balzac. But he also takes inspiration from the great American crime fiction — including the Los Angeles noir master Raymond Chandler — and Hollywood movies, which help him visualize the rich worlds he creates in his novels. Zafón, author of The Shadow of the Wind, and most recently of The Angel’s Game, visited Zócalo to chat with The Agony Column’s Rick Kleffel, to discuss his life and his art.

To the Western world, women’s rights and political Islam can appear incompatible. Deeply ingrained social norms and particular interpretations of Islamic law leave women in most Middle Eastern countries without legal protection from domestic violence or spousal rape. Women generally have fewer rights than men when it comes to education, work, divorce, and daily life — from dress to driving to being alone outside the home. But a budding grassroots reform movement has seen women begin to demand their rights within an Islamic framework, rather than against it. In the last two decades, more women have begun pursuing education — including college, advanced degrees and even religious education — and participating in politics, business, and the media. Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Isobel Coleman, author of Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East, visited Zócalo in an event co-sponsored by the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations to discuss Islamic feminism, the wo

In his most recent novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Geoff Dyer creates the character Jeff Atman. Much like Dyer, he’s a writer charged with attending and covering the 2003 Venice Biennale. Jeff ignores various masterpieces, stumbles upon one particularly moving piece only by accident, takes in a major light installation while hung over, and participates in a toast to the Bellini—the cocktail—as the best art at the festival. Though Dyer’s views on art and experiencing art don’t exactly match Jeff’s, he uses his character to examine art and place. Geoff Dyer visited Zócalo to discuss his experience of a particular piece of art.

As college degrees become an ever more essential qualification for earning a living, students are going further than ever before to get them — and creating a new and rapidly changing worldwide marketplace for higher ed. Nearly three million students leave their home countries to pursue college degrees, a 40 percent increase since 1999. American institutions have set up shop in over 40 countries and are accepting more international students than ever before — with USC leading the pack in matriculating foreigners. College rankings are internationalizing, which could mean American universities won’t stay at the top of the heap. How will worldwide competition for the best minds transform education as we know it, and does it mean the end of American leadership in the field? Education expert Ben Wildavsky, author of The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping Our World, visited Zócalo to explain what globalized education means for students, the U.S., and the world.

From the invention of the suburb to the birth of Home and Garden Television, homeownership has long been a central part of the American dream. Americans build ballooning mansions, hunt for hidden architectural gems, drop thousands of dollars per square foot of urban condo or seaside shack, endlessly renovate fixer-uppers, and carefully outfit interiors. Why are we so desperate to own? Meghan Daum, author of Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, visits Zócalo to recount her search for a place to call home and to explain the pleasures and perils of believing that only a house can make you whole.

Before travel shifted to the highways and the skies, the railroad connected Americans and developed the country. Trains built the Eastern seaboard cities, connected the distant coasts, populated and glamorized the West, determined the outcomes of wars, and, when regulated and subsidized, shaped our ideas of government and economy. Today, barring some commuter rails and urban subways, trains are underutilized across the country, particularly in California, where discount airlines are cheaper and faster, and cars run everywhere on any schedule. But with the promise of high-speed train technology to connect California, buzz about L.A.’s subway to the sea, ever-more crowded roads, and federal and state governments ready to fund job-generating infrastructure projects, rail seems ready for a comeback. Is rail the future of transit, or is it a waste of resources? Zócalo invites a panel of experts — including KCET’s Val Zavala, L.A. County Metropolitan Transit Authority Board Member Richard Katz, Gloria Ohland of Rec

John A. Pérez, a former labor leader and the first openly gay Speaker of the Assembly in California, ascends to the seat at a particularly challenging time for the state, and with only a year's experience. Not only has California been struggling with a devastating budget crisis, but federal policies expected to assist the state might fail. Transportation and education dollars slated for California haven't been able to blunt layoffs and service cutbacks; and national healthcare reform, whatever its merits, could hurt the state budget. How should Pérez and the legislature address California's problems? Pérez, who represents Los Angeles and is a cousin of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, visited Zócalo to discuss his plans for the state.

Internet commerce has boomed in the last decade. Americans alone spend over $150 billion in online transactions, and over 50 million U.S. households bank on the web. But how safe are the sites computer users around the world trust with their most sensitive information, and how precarious is the system? Isolated cases of identity theft and computer viruses fail to capture the vast risk crime poses to the way we use the Internet, and a real public debate has yet to begin. Exploiting systemic security holes and a Wild-West-style lack of governance, supported by governments bent on cyber-espionage and cyber-warfare, and rarely thwarted by law enforcement agencies, organized crime has made the web its main operation, compromising more than half the world’s computers. Journalist Joseph Menn, Technology Correspondent for the Financial Times and author of Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet, visited Zócalo to explain why organized crime threatens the Internet as we

One hundred sixty years ago, California, newly independent from Mexico, chose statehood. Since then, California has spurred change around the country. Its progressive policies inspired other states to follow suit, and the innovations sparked in Silicon Valley and fueled by venture capital — more of which is invested in California than in the other 49 states combined — have transformed the way we live. But the rest of the country often gives the Golden State the cold shoulder. Californians are considered flaky, superficial latte-drinkers. The state receives only about 80 cents in return for every federal tax dollar it pays, and its requests for aid during the current fiscal and political crisis have gone mostly ignored by the Obama administration. Would California be better off as its own country? Zócalo invites the New America Foundation’s Joe Mathews, PoliPoint Press editor Peter Richardson, political consultant Darry A. Sragow, writer and blogger David Dayen, and Global California author Abraham Lowenthal t